1-year Minimum Drug Sentence ‘Cruel and Unusual’: Judge

By
CBC News
on January 27, 2014

A B.C. provincial court judge has adjourned the case of a small time drug dealer to give the Crown a chance to justify the law that says anyone convicted of drug trafficking, who has already served time, must go to jail for a year.

In his written ruling, Judge Joseph Galati says, for some people, that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment contrary to section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In September of last year, the provincial court judge convicted Vancouver resident Joseph Ryan Lloyd on three counts of trafficking two grams of crack cocaine, six grams of methamphetamine and a half gram of heroin.

It wasn’t Lloyd’s first trafficking offence and under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s new tough-on-crime legislation, the resident of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, should now serve at least a year in jail.